Last of the camping gear is purchased and most is stuffed in the car. And boy is that car packed. It’s ideal for the two of us. We always knew it would be a squeeze for four but we hadn’t anticipated going camping with four. The boys will be sitting in the back with quite a bit of gear. And Sam still wants to take his guitar. Final compression testing soon.

Yesterday evening we had a little soiree. Now that we’re all in civilization the notion of having drinks and nibbles for folks aboard seems to have been forgotten. So it was a nice change to have a bunch of folks aboard. We ended up with the folks from Leu Cat, Sea Mist, Paleides, Jackster, True Companions, Emily Grace, Marequesa and Boree. The rain, which had been falling all day, dried out so we had a great evening.

It’s approaching 7:30am. Folks are still asleep aboard. Ben and Sam went out on the town with Ian from Sea Mist so may end being a little groggy when woken. I’ll give them until 8. Then we’ll stuff the last few things in the car, test we can all fit in, then back to the boat to move it over the river and leave it on the pilings. Hopefully we’ll be away by 10.

Shortly after 6am we took off in the car to drive to Auckland International Airport. We’d been given warnings of the traffic so we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there. Despite plenty of traffic we were still nearly an hour early so we stopped for breakfast and a shop before entering the airport.

Sam duly came through and we had hugs all round despite Sam suffering (read reeking) from sitting in airplanes for over a day. Now further motivated to get the shower working on the boat we stopped at a few DIY/garden centers on the way to see if we could find a regulator/pressure reducer so solve the over pressure problem we have from the dock water. We had no luck.

On the way back we also detoured to the small village of M*** where we stopped for fish and chips. The day had turned out to be exceptionally dry and warm which was a very nice change from all the rain we’ve been having recently.

After lunch we headed back to Whangarei. On the way I received two calls, one from the chandlery to say the new grill burner has arrived and one from the garden center to say our regulator had arrived. We stopped first at the latter. Ben and Sam chose to walk through the town back to the boat from there. We then picked up the burner and returned to the boat to find Ben and Sam already there.

The water and grill were soon fixed and we spent the rest of the afternoon chatting. We were invited over to Scream for beers which we did and met Dave from Marquesas there too. He’s arrived recently and will be here for a few months. Scream will be leaving today.

Today we’ll be doing some shopping for Sam and probably go and see the new Tron movie.